I was just over on the website "lensoftruth" and comparing some of there head2head analysis. It seemed that most of the newer games on the PS3 exhibit a high "screen tearing" percentage per frames per second. The way they illustrate it, makes it look like it is a developer issue and not a hardware issue. Am I correct in this assumption? Can someone explain "screen tearing"?

Yeah it's what Lewis described perfectly. It doesn't happen in many console games because they are usually optimized for the system, and if it does happen, it shows how badly the game has been coded. Usually happens on PC when you have a system that is not up to spec for a certain game.